Out: A Schoolboy's Tale

by David Brining

  15: Up all night (to get lucky)

  EVERY mouthful of Mum's toad-in-the-hole seemed to choke me. Even bananas-in-custard didn't help. All I could think about was Alistair Rose. I hated the thought of him suffering. He'd told me once he couldn't talk to his parents about anything. His father, a pension advisor, and his mother, a college administrator, were these total like dinosaurs living in the Dark Ages?

  ''I don't want to do Law at Oxford,'' he'd said, ''I want to do English at Warwick and be a journalist but they don't listen, they're not interested, not in what I want. So imagine if they thought I fancied boys. They'd have me to a shrink before you could say 'shrink'.''

  My parents would go utterly ballistic. I'd tried to come out several times already and each occasion had resulted in World War Three. Mind you, I guessed I hadn't raised it directly. Not exactly. Well, you don't, do you? It's kind of embarrassing to talk about sex and feelings and stuff with your parents and to say that you don't like what they like, that you like willies actually. There was no way in hell they'd still love you after that bombshell. It'd be like what kind of freak have we spawned here? Anyway, I gave up with the pie, said I'd reheat it later and fled to my bedroom.

  I lay awake for hours. As the night shaded into dawn, the blackness melting into a vague, washed-out greyness, I drifted off, waking an hour later sticky and sweaty from yet another wet-dream. This time I was lying naked on my front on my bed with my right arm under the pillow. In pale green pyjamas, Andy Paulus was sitting beside me, stroking my hair and my naked back and staring into my eyes whilst I unbuttoned his jacket, although I was worried that Ali might come back for the diary he'd left next to Pickles.

  Dream-Paulus shushed me, pressed his finger against my lips and unzipped my chest, from throat to navel. I kissed him. Pushing me down on the pillows, he sat astride me.

  'Are we gonna do it then?' he asked.

  'Ali left his diary,' I said. 'He might come back.'

  'Don't care,' said Dream-Paulus. 'Let's do it.' Pushing his hand between my thighs, he chucked his pyjamas on the floor and…

  Miserably I sat up and stared at Pickles' glinting tawny eyes, the ME109 and Stuka above me, the fiery orange of the Hekla eruption beside me. My Timex said 3.37.

  Andrew Paulus. God Almighty. So many dreams about Andrew Paulus. Jesus Christ. Lying back on my pillows I masturbated rapidly, panting and shuddering and clenching my toes as I spurted twice on my stomach then dribbled the rest over my fingers. As my breathing slowed, I licked my hand. It was thick, kind of gloopy, you know? Slightly sweet? A little salty? Furtively, I lapped the rest off my fingers. The taste was difficult to describe. But I quite liked it. I wondered what Ali's tasted like. Or Andy's. How much did they come? How far could they spurt? If Andy actually did spurt in my mouth, like in the dream… what would that be like? Suddenly I was hard again. I rolled onto my side trying to keep my hands off it and my mind off that image. I was not successful.

  Leo the Lion lifted my spirits. He was chatty, lively and flirty, dressed again in the pastel-pink Lacoste sweater, pistachio jeans and lilac Converse over pale pink socks, and I, in black Levis and cobalt-blue sweater put my worries aside to enjoy his company.

  ''We got you a cracking costume,'' I said, describing from the keyboard the French-maid's outfit while he slotted his flute together.

  ''Oo la la,'' he breathed, those extraordinary lilac eyes lighting up with excitement. ''I was planning to wear a bikini, show some skin, you know? Where did you get it?''

  ''I worry about you sometimes,'' I said, striking middle C. ''A place called Nigel's Knick-Knacks. My God, the man couldn't keep his hands off me. He even patted my bum.''

  ''Where's this shop?'' The innocent tone couldn't conceal his excited curiosity.

  ''I worry about you,'' I repeated, striking middle C again.

  ''I got to get it somewhere, J,'' he said, jigging a little, ''Otherwise I'll burst.''

  Don't look at me, mate, I thought. I got troubles of my own, and you're so under-age.

  Fauré's Op 78 Sicilienne in G minor was a nice piece, two flats, andantino, easy arpeggio accompaniment, but he fluffed the B natural entry in Bar 22, playing B flat instead, so we repeated it then I decided his sforzandos in bars 28 and 32 didn't work, that bars 33 to 43 weren't legato enough and that his pianissimo in in bar 55 was too loud, and made him do everything again. When he grumbled, I said that if he wanted to make music with me, he had to get it right and that meant focusing on the detail. I got the impression nobody had ever told him that before. I made him play it twice more then let him practise his Grade Three piano pieces, this Reinecke G major Sonatina and 'Clowning' by Kabalevsky whilst I watched his fingering. I showed him how to play the Kabalevsky, wrote some fingering directions on the page, mainly 3 under the bass notes, and advised him on the rhythm, then I dug out my old Grade Three book for sight-reading. I hadn't looked at it for years. Mrs Lennox had like written all over the André Sonatina, circling finger numbers in red pencil and scribbling 'wrists up!' in orange. Tchaikovsky's 'March of the Wooden Soldiers' had been divided into thirteen sections with blue pencil-strokes. I remembered playing each one in turn, in endless and tedious isolated-practice sessions. She'd written at the end 'Pay more attentn to the rests + LH 5 – 7.' The dotted rhythms had challenged this nine year old, but he still got a Distinction (142/150). In my purple Grade II book, we'd cut the tempo of the Le Couppey study on page 4 from one crotchet = 104 to one = 84. She'd written next to the ninth bar '1) F# 2) smooth RH, phrases LH.' The Khachaturian Scherzo on page 12 had 'little faster & more flowing, not heavy' written at the top of the page, then, underneath, in my childish handwriting, 'slower, steady'. I got a Distinction for that one too (144). I bet you hate me now! Not my fault. I was born that way. Or perhaps I just got lucky?

  ''What mood are you trying to create?'' I asked. ''When you practise, you must practise with purpose. Think about what you want to improve before you begin.'' All my teachers had told me that.

  We took some coffee up to my room. Mum'd dumped a load of laundry on my bed with an instruction to iron it and put it away. Instead I scooped everything up and deposited it on the carpet. He said my room was like being inside a boiled egg.

  ''Nice wind-chimes. Very New-Age,'' he said, flopping on my pillows, ''Very hippy.''

  I played him the opening of Einstein on the Beach. He said it was weird. I told him Paulus was obsessed with it and anything with tapes, repeated rhythms, looped voices, electronics. This part was called Knee Play 1 and involved this woman reading out numbers and going 'these are the days my friends' over and over to this electric organ.

  ''But there's no tune,'' said Leo crossly.

  ''Oh my dear,'' I said, trying to imitate Paulus, ''Tunes are sooo last century!''

  ''Bollocks,'' said Leo, who was into Madness, Mozart and Adam Ant.

  ''Adam Ant?'' I scoffed, ''He wears make-up.''

  ''Who doesn't?'' grinned Leo, shuffling Top Trumps 'Tanks' while I replaced the Glass with Rachmaninov's wonderful second symphony with its heart-breaking adagio and stirring finale. ''Treat yourself to some lippy, J, and a decent eyeliner. Do wonders for your looks.''

  Sprawling on my carpet, the gay little gimp captured my prized Soviet T-54 with his French AMX-30 on horse-power (520 to 720) and then my Chieftain with his General Patton on speed (25 to 31 mph) whilst singing Dennis Waterman's song, ''If you want to, I'll change the situation, right people, right time, just the wrong location, I've got a good idea, just you keep me near, I'd be so goo-ood for you, love ya like ya want me to…'' Gimp.

  Kicking his pink-socked feet up in the air, he suddenly blurted ''Is Andy Paulus gay?''

  ''How would I know?'' I scowled, my dream like bouncing back into my brain.

  ''No reason,'' he shrugged. ''Except you're really close friends. I thought he might have said something.'' He hesitated then added shyly ''About me, I mean. I thought he might, well, kind of… like me, you know?'' He ran a pink cat's-tongue over his si
lver brace. My heart bounced and my mouth dried out like a camel's jockstrap.

  ''Would that bother you?'' I asked, feeling this fluttering in my stomach whilst the lush, romantic strings of the Rachmaninov swirled around us.

  ''No,'' he admitted. ''I like him.'' There was another hesitation. ''Do you like me?''

  Yikes. What to say? Even the Jehovah's Witnesses would be welcome at the front-door right now. How do you tell another, especially younger boy, 'I fancy the arse off you' without actually saying it and sounding like totally creepy? That was how I suddenly felt about Leo. My mouth went even drier. The music intensified, wave after wave of heart-stopping, heart-stirring emotion. But how to ask him? 'Cos 'the question wasn't and isn't actually 'do you like me?' but 'are you like me?' I was suddenly red as a pepper as the music crashed to a heart-rending climax and began to die away.

  ''I'm gonna invite him to my Halloween party tomorrow,'' he said. ''You'll come too, won't you? Fancy dress. We're gonna make pumpkin lanterns, watch The Omen, have a sleepover with scary stories… it's gonna be spooktacular, ha ha! Bring your PJs and a toothbrush.''

  Spooktacular? Oh boy. I'd miss Starsky and Hutch – some Spanish girl sees her boss commit a murder - and I didn't really fancy a night with 4D giggling and farting like gimps. Besides, I'd just got into this BBC serial about a public school between the wars. It reminded me of our school, all those posh boys with neat hair and cut-glass accents standing up when masters in gowns entered dusty old classrooms. There was this great episode where one of the teachers had dropped dead in the classroom while spouting Latin insults at him out of Fools and Horses. I wondered if, by any chance, it might happen to Leatherface, you know? 'Boys on the Rises stay where you…. Aggggh. Peters, fasten your…. coll-arrrghhh…'

  ''Any girls coming?''

  Leo didn't know any girls, except for his sister's friends. They were all in Year Five and having a pyjama-party of their own. Yikes! I could hear my hair literally standing on end. Talk about Halloween nightmare! Ticket to Shrieksville, please.

  ''It's not at our house,'' he reassured me. ''The folks couldn't cope with a dozen pre-pubescent girls and a dozen adolescent lads mixing it up under the same roof.''

  For my own part, I would rather eat my own testicle kebabs raw with Savoy cabbage and a nice Semillon Blanc, you know? I'd rather eat yours, Reader.

  I thought about Leo a lot that afternoon, wondering what he might know, what I might be brave enough to ask him. The eighteen-month age-gap didn't matter, not if we were two of a kind. When he left, he kissed me on the lips, just the briefest, darted peck, then gone. It promised so much. Not sex necessarily, but something nice, something warm and good.

  I stared into the back garden, at a blue-backed, creamy breasted nuthatch flickering round this peanut-dispenser, a bunch of blue-tits squatting on a suet fat-ball and a few red-faced goldfinches squabbling over some nyjer seeds. A female blackbird was splashing about in the pedestal birdbath and a robin was perched on the fence. The trees were beginning to shed their crisp, brown leaves and the red spikes of dogwood blazed with a fiery intensity. In December, these silver-foliaged shrubs in the corner, and these great soft white plumes of Sunningdale Silver pampas, which, as Woman's Weekly put it, burst three metres into the air like fountain spouts and, under the pale skies and sharp frosts of winter, made the garden sparkle as though everything were crusted with diamonds. We had different stuff every season. It was great to watch. Dad, I decided, was a genius.

  We hadn't had a garden in our last house, just a concrete-covered yard which Mum scrubbed with a hard-bristled brush. When we moved, I'd found the garden fascinating. I'd spent hours logging bullfinches, chaffinches and thrushes, created habitats from bark and wood-chippings under pot-shards for beetles and earwigs to colonise and gazed into the murky depths of the pond for frog-spawn, tadpoles, toads and newts. Dad even tried goldfish till one morning this scary-looking hunch-backed grey heron swooped in and scoffed the lot.

  For Dad, the garden was a place for floral experiment, azaleas, wallflowers, sweet-peas, various bamboos and black grass. You name it, he trialled it. For Mum, it was a food supplier, a stockist of apples, cherries, damsons, various berries and a mass of veg, carrots, potatoes, onions, cabbages. You name it, she grew it. For me, it was a microcosm of the world, where life-and-death struggles for survival were played out on a daily basis by a dozen different species competing for the same space and food with our late tabby cat like some nuclear bomb lurking in the background. You name it, I watched it.

  Anyway, most of the jobs Dad had delegated involved skimming (leaves from the pond-surface), pruning (the brambles behind the shed) or painting (the black front-gate and the new fence-panels). I fancied the last job most 'cos I loved the head-spinning smell of creosote in the morning. Though now I had a party costume to make too. Draining my coffee cup, I slipped into wellies and black Regatta parka with the fur-trimmed hood, and headed to the shed for some secateurs whilst considering the problem of waste-disposal. I didn't want to leave it in the garden or bag it up in the garage, nor chuck it into the street for the council to tackle. Knowing the Council, that'd be sometime in the next month of Sundays, right?

  I imagined I was Henry Morton Stanley hacking through the African bush towards a long-lost native village, i.e. the shed, and when I finally broke through the clinging creepers and crawling lianas, I would utter the famous greeting 'Doctor Livingstone, I presume' before settling by a roaring fire to watch the tribal dancing.

  I'd always kind of fancied being an explorer, you know? One of my favourite books, given as a Crissy prezzie by the Grunters like a bazillion years ago, was Great Explorers, this big hardback describing the adventures of the Polar explorers Peary and Amundsen, the African explorers Livingstone and Stanley, Captain Cook, Eric the Red, this Viking who found North America, and, intriguingly, a Frenchman called Réné Caillé who discovered Timbuktu. I found this book inspirational and recreated these adventures with my Action Men, all the while resolving that one day I too would be an explorer and visit Timbuktu, or at least the raspberry bushes behind the shed, boldly going where no-one had gone before.

  Returning with an armful of brambles, I supposed I could like lob 'em over the wall into next door's veggie patch and blame trick-or-treaters. I really wanted to burn them but Mum'd go ballistic if I lit a bonfire unsupervised so they'd simply have to go on the compost. Boring but better than burning down Dad's new fence, I guess. A sudden vision of forest-fire flaring through the garden wasn't encouraging. Fire dropping from the fruit trees would not go down well with either the folks or the neighbours, you know? So I dumped the stuff on the compost and spent half an hour chucking conkers at this tin of Ronseal while I considered painting the gate and saving the creosoting till tomorrow. One more conker ricocheted off the Ronseal into the pond. Some fat frog hopped out with an indignant croak. Yay! Result!

  Resting my Crown transistor against a brick, I prised the lid off the old Dulux crow-black and set to work. Steve Wright was playing Cliff Richard, ''It's so funny, how we don't talk any more.'' I was thinking of what I wanted to take to the party, this utterly gorgeous pumpkin-and-chorizo soup I had found in Woman's Weekly near the prediction that Gemini should avoid compromising situations this week, a stack of conkers and Mum's home-made parkin.

  Then there was my costume. What would I wear?

  ''Well it really doesn't matter to me, I guess your leaving was meant to be, it's down to you now you wanna be free...''

  The broad, flat blade of the paintbrush reminded me of Busy Bodies, the Laurel and Hardy film set on a building-site where Laurel dips a paintbrush in glue and jams it onto Hardy's chin. When the glue sets and Laurel finds he can't remove it, he covers the brush-beard with foam and shaves it off with a plane (not a 'plane like Concorde, a plane, like in Woodwork, you know?) Hardy's pained glance at the camera still cracked me up. And the numpty critics reckon the fourth wall was broken last year in some lamoid TV show? And it was sooo like radical a
nd cutting-edge? Sorry, numpties. Oliver Hardy did it in the 1930s. Like get a history? Anyway, maybe I'd look good with a brush-beard. Maybe that could be my costume for Leo's party. Laughing softly, I turned up the radio, then this muttered curse drew my attention away from the paint-pot and silenced my humming. What I saw made me laugh aloud. Mark Gray was carrying what seemed like pieces of a bicycle past the hedge.

  ''On your bike, mate!'' I called merrily. ''Why don't you milk it?''

  Gray threatened to stick my paintbrush somewhere intimate.

  ''I just bought it.'' He shook the frame so angrily everything rattled. Both the chain and the rear-wheel had come off. ''Twenty quid from my sister's boyfriend. He lives on the other side of the park so I cycled up Little Switzerland, you know?''

  I did. A steeply sloped road through the woods which bore as much resemblance to Switzerland as I did to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

  ''Changed gear at the top, there's this bloody great bang, and the bloody chain comes off. Bloody pedals spinning round and I'm going bloody nowhere. Tried to fix it, oil all over my bloody fingers, then pushed it round the corner and the bastard bloody chain slips between the wheel and the brake-fork. Totally jammed it. Weighs a bloody ton an' all.''

  Sticking my paintbrush into a jar of turpentine and wiping my hands on a rag, I said there were some tools in the shed and told him to bring it through the gate but mind the still-wet paint. He yanked the bike up by the handlebars, which promptly escaped from the frame, the bike sliding backwards and leaving Gray holding just the handlebars connected to the rest of the machine by the tenuous threads of brake and gear cables.

  I burst into a massive fit of laughter, wiping my eyes with my knuckles as he tried to re-fit the handlebars to a bike which refused to stay still. Eventually, he furiously hurled the bike to the pavement. This proved another mistake 'cos one of the pedals fell off, rattling defiantly into the gutter. As Gray howled, I clutched my stomach and gasped ''The world's first fully collapsible bike. I know he said strip it down but he probably meant when you got home? Not on the way… ha ha ha.'' I thought I was going to puke.

  Gray's face darkened like a thundercloud so I manhandled him and his bike-bits into the garden, roaring with laughter again as I sang Pink Floyd's 'I've got a bike, you can ride it if you like, it's got a basket, a bell that rings, and things to make it look good.'

  ''Shut your face,'' he scowled.

  Although I spread a load of newspaper on the kitchen table, Mum still went ballistic when she got in and found like a bazillion tons of rusty, oily scrap-metal all over the place. After she yelled so all the fucking pandas in China could hear 'cos I hadn't taken it into the garage and called me a 'bloody kid', she smiled sweetly at Gray, offered him home-made banana-bread, asked after his sister and Becky and wondered if he could find me a nice girl.

  ''Claire Ashton,'' Gray answered owlishly. ''They're made for each other. Everyone thinks so. And she's crazy about him.''

  Mum seemed to swell with happiness. The bike was suddenly forgiven 'cos Mark was such a nice boy, not like Toffee-nosed Timothy (Wilson) or Awkward Andrew (Paulus), although we had a bit of a row about Halloween while she was cutting my hair. She didn't want me to go. She wasn't sure whether to welcome the fact there were no girls allowed or worry about it, especially since I was the oldest going, and my pointing out Paulus was older, albeit by five weeks, didn't help. She didn't approve of Halloween anyway, labelling it 'American trash', even though trick-or-treating had like originated in medieval England, actually, Mum, if you read your history, and was co-hosting a churchy alternative which she had hoped I would support. Tim and 'that nice Holly who wears those lovely hand-knitted hats' would be going.

  Yikes! An evening discussing wholesome topics like how kids could remain chaste in this sinfully sexualised world was almost as terrifying as being trapped at Emily Trent's Year Five girls-only PJ-and-pony party. I would rather like literally broil and eat my own bladder, you know? With that diced mixed veg that looks like vomit and a nice Vouvray.

  ''There'll be a film,'' she said, snipping round my ears so the dark brown hair pattered onto the paper spread over the kitchen tiles. ''It's a sing-along version of Godspell.''

  Wow. That sold it. Far better than The Omen and a sleepover with some cute boys.

  ''Let him go,'' said Dad. ''There won't be any booze and he's not gonna get pregnant, ha ha.'' He was staying in with Zulu and a Merlot wine-box. ''You could go as a wizard.''

  A wizard! All that magic-spell shit? Sooo lame, Dad. But there weren't many options, you know? God, I hated Halloween. Just stick a sheet over my head and go as a ghost, eh?

  ''Can you put in a parting, Mum? On the left? For a change?'' Like Ali's. ''Or maybe in the centre?''

  ''I don't think so,'' said Mum, cutting it in the usual dead-straight line. ''You're not old enough for a centre-parting.''

  Though I hated zombies, I decided to go as one anyway 'cos I could make a pretty spectacular costume fairly easily. I was gonna mix ash from the fire-place with some talcum powder and some of Mum's white foundation and daub it over my face then draw these like massive black rings round my eyes with her liner-pencil and use some red lipstick to highlight my mouth and teeth, you know? I was also going to sprinkle talc in my hair to make it grey. As for clothes, apart from removing the laces from my black shoes, I didn't really have much I could use except my grey school trousers and a white shirt covered in 'blood' made from red food-colouring and chocolate sauce, not ketchup. Ketchup stank, as we'd learned once in a house-play. I'd also add some brown stains to the shirt with used teabags.

  Sticking on 'The Time-Warp Song', I slow-danced in a strawberry-coloured slip between bathroom, living-room and bedroom. I scooped a handful of soft grey ash into a cereal bowl then, while I was going upstairs, wiped my hand through my hair. Unfortunately, while I was jumping to the left then stepping to the right, with my hands on my hips and my knees in tight, I spilled some ash on the hall-carpet. Quite a lot of ash actually. In fact, half the fucking bowl. And dropped the red food-colouring from between my teeth. Then a couple of steaming, soggy teabags splatted alarmingly on the stairs as I struggled unsuccessfully to catch them. Fucking bollocks. Ten minutes with a bucket of hot soapy water and a sponge kind of took care of the carpet but the bathroom was a total disaster-zone. Red food-colouring and chocolate sauce streaked the yellow basin and clumps of ash and talc stuck to the tiles. Ah, never mind. Mum'd be home soon and it was almost time for Yogi Bear.

  ''With a bit of a mind-flip, you're there in the time-slip,'' I shimmied, ''And nothing can be the same…''

  I'd started off with the old Imperial Leather and Clearasil, in case any spots crept out, before smearing lipstick all over my teeth and gums and, for added effect, taking a massive swig of 'blood' into my mouth then tipping back my head and opening my lips so it dribbled over my face and neck. Unfortunately it also dribbled over my chest and onto the cork tiles. But shit. I looked utterly, awesomely cool, especially with these big black eyes and grey skin.

  Then Mum came home.

  Honestly, you'd think she'd get why there was a bucket of cold grey water behind the front door, but no. I mean, she just sticks in her key, opens the door and yells 'bloody kid' as the bucket upends all over the carpet. Thundering into the bathroom, she freezes to the spot then screams, I mean, literally screams so every lion in fucking Kenya can hear ''Is that your school-shirt?'' then ''Is that my lipstick?'' and finally, ballistically, for the bloody lemurs in Madagascar, her voice rising to this like shriek, like some jet-aircraft zooming overhead, ''Asssssh? From the fireplace? In the bathroom?'' She actually smacked me, like really hard? Slapping my shoulders with her hand like a gazillion times, she made me sit in the hall blow-drying the carpet with a Babyliss Megaturbo. She must've had a bloody bad day at work, right? 'Cos she hadn't like smacked me for years. Not since I was ten and the 'playing with yourself in the bath' incident. Anyhow, maybe the patchouli hadn't blended or something. Whatever. There was n
o need to wallop me. And when I asked if she'd had a bad day, she walloped me again, two sharp slaps on the arse with her hairbrush. God, she was so moody. Fucking menopause, eh? Get to yoga and like sort out your chakras, I didn't say.

  Leo's house, a newly built three-bedroom detached with white window-frames, no garden to speak of, just a patch of grass between the front and the road, and old gold carpets throughout, was situated on a new development near the park half a mile or so from mine. A pumpkin lantern squatted malevolently on the white window-sill, a candle glowing through triangular eye-holes. Their living-room was dominated by a large TV, a bookcase and a couple of posh grey sofas. A tiny closet huddled under the stairs and the bigger family bathroom, where Paulus and I spiced up our cranberry juices with vodka, was upstairs opposite Leo's room. Leo's parents' room overlooked the road while Emily's room seemed to have been invaded by an assortment of lurid pink ponies, sparkly rainbows and Barbie dolls.

  ''Thought this was Leo's room,'' I muttered to Paulus. ''Cheers.''

  I necked some vodka and, coughing slightly, handed him the bottle I'd liberated from Dad's secret supply.

  Andrew, being very cool, had come as the Wanderer from Wagner's Siegfried. Palely barefoot, he wore an oversized black shirt open to his non-existent waist, black trousers and a 'blood-stained' bandage across his right eye. Wish I'd thought of it, you know? Anyway, I told him what'd happened at home, like with the ash and Mum and the bucket? He called me a spaz and passed me his Walkman so I could hear his latest craze, Nixon in China, this opera by John Adams, another American minimalist, all sprung, driving rhythms and telling the story of Richard Nixon's 1972 meeting with Mao Tse-tung. I'd never thought contemporary politics could be the subject of opera but it was really exciting, this driving motoric aria 'News, news, news has a kind of mystery, and though we spoke quietly, the eyes and ears of history caught every gesture.' Man, I just stared at Paulus, blown away. Then 'The Chairman Dances' opened with the classic line 'Let's teach these motherfuckers how to dance.' Who says opera's boring? I mean, have you heard Tosca? Where [SPOILER ALERT – IF YOU HAVEN'T HEARD IT (and, let's face it, you haven't, have you?) LOOK AWAY NOW], she stabs and kills the evil police chief Scarpia, who has the most evil laugh in opera, then jumps to her death off the castle battlements, and all for love 'cos her boyfriend painter gets shot? Man. It's fucking epic. Listen to it. It'll change your life.

  Leo's room, plastered with posters of Klingons and Spiderman, was done out in lilac and lavender. A small red cage containing four furry gerbils chewing steadily through a mound of straw occupied a corner of his desk. Man, I couldn't believe I envied Leo! I had begged Mum for gerbils, and a hamster, especially after the cat got killed. She'd said we didn't live in a zoo. Anyway, he also had this massive toy lion on his bed. Leo's room felt coolly relaxing, even though he'd decorated it for his Hallowe'en Spooktacular (man, I can't believe I used Leo's lamo gag again!) with fake spray-on cobwebs, a couple of inflatable luminous skeletons and some rubber bats. He also had this CD of scary sound effects, like creaky doors and howling wolves, that kind of stuff. He and Sutcliffe were already trading poems as music blasted from the speakers, everyone shouting in unison ''Who you gonna call? GHOSTBUSTERS!'' whilst Paulus chucked the lion about and I poked the gerbil cage with a pencil to get their attention.

  ''Mary had a little lamb,'' chirped Sutcliffe, ''She fed it from a bucket…'' He'd come as a devil, slicking his mousy hair into a skull-hugging V and staining his face red. He'd blagged some thick red tights off his sister and even had a pointed tail made from a short length of red-painted rope. ''And after dinner every night she took him home to suck it…''

  ''There was young woman from China,'' countered Leo, ''Who had an astounding vagina…'' He had dressed up as a vampire, with long pointy teeth, a frilly white shirt with frilly cuffs, a flowing black cape and very white face-paint, and kept trying to bite our necks. In fact, and unnervingly, he had given me another brief, dry peck on the lips when I arrived.

  His Marvel comics had been set upon immediately by the others who sprawled on his Spiderman-duveted bed. I had never considered Leo cool before, like ever? But it seemed like in Gimp-Land, he was ice, ice, baby, you know? He had the much sought-after Death of Spiderman, in which Norman Osborn kills Doc Ock and gathers Sandman and all Spidey's enemies together, and Spiderman talks about heroes, and says his definition of a hero is someone who stands for something bigger than themselves. I kind of agreed with that. Like all my heroes took risks and made sacrifices to achieve something beyond themselves. Perhaps that's why Spiderman was my favourite superhero too, and perhaps what I most admired in people was risk-taking, sacrifice-making and standing for something bigger than yourself. Paulus, meanwhile, preferred going ''Boom Boom Mister Jonathan'' with a Basil Brush glove-puppet whilst Sooty and Leo were playing Darth Vader's death-scene with these Palitoy action figures. Where Jean-Luc Picard and Starsky and Hutch's radio-controlled and ultra-ultra-cool red-and-white Gran Torino fitted in I had no idea.

  ''Man,'' sighed Paulus, ''I'd love a car like that.''

  Or the Bugatti Veyron I'd seen on Top Gear hammering through France at 180 mph.

  As 'The Time-Warp Song' blasted out again, Andy and I slugged more vodka. I'd been right to bring it. The Halloween theme extended to the buffet, with brains (boiled cauliflower), maggots (sticky rice), worms (noodles), eyeballs (gooseberries), testicles (kiwi fruit), blood (cranberry juice) and pus (mango juice) on the menu.

  ''Dochvetlh vISoplaHbe,'' said Sutcliffe, Klingon, apparently, for 'I can't eat that.'

  ''There was a young lady from Ealing,'' said Leo, ''Who pissed all over the ceiling…''

  Then he started lobbing us questions from his Top of the Form Quiz Book, ''What is the federal capital of Australia?'', ''What is fool's gold?'', ''What is the usual means of transport at the Cresta Run?'' Sutcliffe asked if we spoke Klingon, in Klingon ('tlhIngan Hol Dajatlh'a'?'), then Leo bellowed ''It's astounding, time is fleeting, Madness takes its toll...'' and lined everyone up for yet another extraordinarily camp time-warp. As I told Paulus this could be a very long night, I blamed the E-numbers in their drinks. All those chemicals can't be good for you, especially since they'd got like a kazillion sugar-hits from trick-or-treating round the half-dozen houses of the estate, like these Jelly Tots, Milky Ways and fistfuls of Smarties. Man, they'd be bouncing off the ceiling by bedtime. Fortunately they burned off a load of energy on the dance-floor, well, Leo's carpet, 'cos after we did the Monster Mash, which was 'a graveyard smash,' Sooty put on his new Meatloaf CD and we all went mental to 'Bat out of Hell,' air-guitars, posing with hankies, miming motorbike-riding, yowling the lyrics, the works.

  ''Then like a sinner before the gates of heaven, I'll come crawling on back to you…''

  Leo, slinging his arm round Andy's neck, sang ''We'd better make the most of our one night together…'' Andy's face tensed under the make-up but even he loved the album sleeve, this motorbike roaring from a graveyard into a blazing red sky, as we loved Iron Maiden's artwork – I mean, have you seen Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, with a lobotomised head and a hand holding some bloody heart or liver or something? And it's got 'The Clairvoyant' - 'There's a time to live but isn't it strange that as soon as you're born you're dying…' which is like this totally epic song. Man, you gotta get it. It'll blow your mind and your speakers.

  After a supper of hot-dogs and the occasional severed foot (plastic, from Tesco), jacket potatoes, barbecue-beans (with plastic eyeballs concealed in the mix), Mum's parkin and like a megazillion photos of us in our costumes, we paraded through this posh avocado-coloured bathroom with pretend gold taps with make-up remover, cold cream, moisturising soap and deodorant, spray-cans of Lynx, Sure underarm speed-sticks, Adidas rollerballs, and prepared for the film. Leo had organised it so he sat on his bed under his Spiderman duvet with Sooty on his right, me on his left and Andy beside me with the half-dozen others in sleeping bags on the floor. The cushions, pillows, bed-rolls and blankets resemble
d a refugee centre.

  I crammed my costume into my backpack and scrambled under the duvet. I'd foregone pyjamas so was wearing just the strawberry slip and a white vest. Andy was in tartan pyjama trousers and a black T-shirt. Leo, in a white slip, his bare chest marble-white, his long legs sapling-smooth, bounced over with some ready-salted crisps. Gulping, I hid my face in the bowl of salted popcorn which Sooty, stripped to his boxers, handed me. As the film began, he killed the lights so the only illumination came from the glowing TV screen and cried ''No wanking, right? Not till the porn film.'' Then he burrowed into the duvet. There was a lot of wriggling and kicking and Leo and Sutcliffe yelling ''Gotcha'' and me muttering ''Kids'' and Paulus calling me Grandma and him, Sooty and Leo crooning the bloody song in these bloody soppy voices (you know, 'Grandma, we love you, Grandma, we do, though you may be far away, we think of you…'). I smacked Sooty with the lion then jumped on Paulus and tickled him in the ribs till, writhing, he screamed for mercy, Leo hit me with a pillow and we settled down for the film.

  Now I don't know if you've seen The Omen. If you have you'll know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, let me warn you now. It's actually really bloody scary. It's about this kid born at 6 a.m. on the 6th day of the 6th month who's adopted by this American diplomat. As he grows up, people die mysteriously until the diplomat discovers the boy is actually the Son of Satan. So far so dull, yeah? But it's about how evil can lurk behind the most innocent face and the cutest smile, even like little kids, yeah? 'Cos the devil can assume any shape he likes. It was a little slow at first but then [SPOILER ALERT… OK, you know] the nanny hanged herself and the priest was impaled by a lightning-rod and Damien the Devil-Kid knocked his pregnant mother off the landing with his tricycle and a wary silence crept over us as we sank inside this creepy story. Leo held my arm while Sutcliffe, mesmerised, scooped up popcorn like some robot. I was really tense, and not just because of the film. I was really conscious of Leo's bare thigh, warm against mine under the duvet. It was all turning me on, you know?

  Anyway, in the film, this photographer and the diplomat were now in this classic haunted cemetery at night, you know? Twisted iron gates, blasted trees, crumbling slabs, the works. They're digging up the skeleton of Damien's real mum, which turns out to be [SPOILER ALERT - bollocks. If you haven’t seen it, you should've] like this dog, yeah? And the diplomat's real son's a baby skeleton with a massive hole in his skull where someone's smashed it in.

  ''Shit!'' I sat bolt-upright, spilling popcorn everywhere as suddenly all these savage, snarling devil-dogs like swarmed from the darkness, barking to wake the dead.

  Leo's fingers dug into my bicep as the dogs leapt at the diplomat, and he scrambled over the gate, impaling his arm on a spike as the bloody devil-dogs snapped at his legs.

  Struggling out of the duvet, I hissed I was off for a piss, though I was really off for a vodka-hit and a bit of space. I crept into the bathroom, where I had left the bottle, unscrewed the red cap and tipped some down my throat. Suddenly Leo, his bare chest seeming unnaturally white in the semi-darkness, appeared in the doorway, making me jump so I spilled vodka over my chin and neck.

  ''Soz, JP,'' he said quietly. ''Didn't mean to scare you. How do you like the film?''

  ''Scarier than I expected,'' I admitted, my voice dying to a semi-whisper as he sat on the edge of the avocado bath beside me. My dreams replayed across my mind.

  ''Is that vodka? Can I have some?'' The gulp he took made him gasp. ''I don't think Andy's interested,'' he said mournfully, ''Not in me anyway.'' He swigged more vodka. The silence was what they call 'pregnant'. I don't know why. Fully laden? Swollen? About to burst? Full of possibilities? All of those perhaps and more… I'm babbling, I know. I held my breath. Leo was coming out.

  ''Do you love him?'' I asked carefully. ''Do you… well, fancy him, you know, like… think he's sexy and that? I mean do you wanna… well, do it with him?''

  Of course he did. I did. Whatever Collins or Crooks thought, Andrew Paulus was like the most shaggable guy in our year. Leo was in love with him. So was I. And everyone in the galaxy thought him gay, except for Paulus himself.

  Leo gulped another large mouthful of vodka, then, nodding slowly, muttered ''I really really fancy him,'' he muttered. ''I wank about him, you know? All the time. I wank about him... like doing stuff to me... You know? Stuff… like…well…'' He locked his eyes on mine. Moving as though underwater, I slid my arm round his waist and kissed his mouth full-on, slowly, once, then twice, leaving my lips on his. I heard his breathing change, felt his body melt in my arm, then his lips parted and his tongue touched mine, exploring gently, tentatively, then more fiercely, more urgently, my blood surging as I ran my tongue over his brace. I moved him from the bath-edge and sat him astride me so I could pull him to me, chest against chest, digging my fingers into that blond candy-floss hair, pressing the flat of my right hand against the small of his back. He peeled off my vest and kissed my chest. My head arced back and my eyes slowly closed. He tasted of strawberries and sweet white wine.

  After what seemed a lifetime, we came up for air, grinning and kissing, kissing and grinning, and hugging each other like crazy. I cupped his face in my palms and told him he was beautiful. He kissed me again. I didn't really need to ask, but I did anyway.

  ''As a spangly pink high-heeled shoe,'' he sighed.

  ''Me too,'' I said unnecessarily. ''Did you tell your folks yet?''

  ''God, no. They'd have a bazillion fits.'' He shifted in my lap so he could rest his chin against my shoulder, his right hand high on my chest as I stroked his hair.

  ''You have no worries there, honey. I told your dad about me, and he was so kind. I think he guesses about you anyway. Unlike my folks who just keep saying it isn't true. Like I'd lie about that. I mean, who the fuck would lie about that?''

  Leo shifted again. ''You're in love with Rosie, aren't you? Everyone can see it.'' Shit. ''I mean, the way you look at each other. You wear your heart on your face, darling.'' We kissed.

  ''He can't make his mind up.'' I told Leo what had happened at Alistair's house. As I talked I realised I still loved him, very much. I couldn't help it. He had captured my heart.

  ''Huh,'' Leo grunted. ''I can't make my mind up either, but not like that load of bollocks. I know what I am. No, I can't choose between Paulus and Shelton.'' He kissed me on the nose. ''Or you, Jonny.'' I rubbed his bare back and snogged him again, more gently this time. ''I never talked about this before, never actually told anyone, you know?''

  ''Nor me,'' I replied. ''I never told anyone I fancy boys, no-one. I mean, I kind of told your dad but not directly. He kind of guessed and I didn't deny it. You're the first, Leo.''

  He kissed my chest. ''Feels good, doesn't it?'' he sighed. ''Telling just one person you trust. Like a massive weight's lifted. Knowing we can be there for each other, you know?''

  As he padded barefoot back to his bedroom and a chorus of wolf-howls, I got dressed, finished the vodka then took from the laundry one of his pink-and-yellow socks as a trophy. I felt exhilarated, my blood on fire. Leo was awesome. I mean, Henry the Hoover or what? And he had a tongue like a fucking hummingbird's, you know? Man, if Ali really wasn't interested, I could have an amazing time with the Lion. God, he'd be sooo good in bed.

  Paulus, smirking, whispered something breathily into my ear which I ignored. I had the strawberry-taste of Leo Trent on my lips, and I loved it. For the first time, I was beginning to think being gay wasn't so bad after all. As the gerbils scuffled in their straw, maybe, just maybe, I'd actually, like, got lucky?